6 posts tagged “palin”

Now, only at the end, do we understand...

So we have McCain today getting his crowd riled up asking who Barack Obama is and then apparently giving a wink and a nod when one member of the crowd screams out "terrorist."

And later we have Sarah Palin with the same mob racket, getting members of the crowd to yell out "kill him", though it's not clear whether the call for murder was for Bill Ayers or Barack Obama. It didn't seem to matter.

The polls are looking like an Obama blowout in this election.  McCain's strategists have said that they have to "change the dynamic" of the election at this point.  When the chips are down, you really get to take stock of a person's character.

(from TPM)

Did you read the nasty op-ed by William Kristol in today's NY Times?  Why the editors gave that intellectual featherweight valuable space in the paper I'll never know.  You have the news section talking about how the McCain campaign is getting ready to go into the gutter with nasty attacks on Obama.  Then, you have the editorial board write an op-ed decrying the gutter politics of the McCain campaign... and then on the opposite page, you have Kristol jumping into the gutter with both feet - and not even with any subtlety.  It really was a thing of beauty.  He's asking Palin about whether she'll bring up Obama and Wright after she tells him about the supposed connection between Obama and Ayers.  What a reach that is... Of course Kristol doesn't seem to be interested in asking her about her husband belonging to a party that is trying to have Alaska secede from the U.S.  Rich!

Oh man, this is just too rich!  This is some sort of a press release from the sun tan booth industry representatives in response to the news that Sarah Palin had a tanning booth installed in the governor's mansion in Alaska.

While partisan bloggers and the sun scare industry will use this as an opportunity to undermine Gov. Palin and demonize the indoor tanning industry, the fact is that Governor Palin's decision to get UV light from a tanning bed positively impacts her health.

"Moderate amounts of indoor tanning allow Governor Palin to experience the many health benefits that come with exposure to UV light," said Dan Humiston, President of the Indoor Tanning Association. "Especially in dreary northern locations like Alaska, indoor tanning can help guard against wintertime depression and ward off diseases associated with vitamin D deficiency."

"Kudos to Governor Palin for standing up to dermatologists and other members of the sun scare industry who are trying to frighten Americans away from UV light."

Yeah!  Stick it to the MAN!  I ain't gonna let no "dermatologists" tell me about "dangers" to my "skin"!  What do they know?  Bunch of pointy-headed egg-heads tellin me what to do!  I'll show them.  I'll get cancer just to spite 'em!

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BTW, on planet reality's irony watch number two zillion with these jokers - let's just quietly note that John McCain has been treated for melanoma.  I'm just sayin...

I kind of hate to keep posting about Sarah Palin... but somehow a lot of the articles I'm reading today are about her.

This one in Slate by Rebecca Traister is really something you should read.  Here are the money 'graphs:

[Sarah Palin's] is a form of feminine power that is utterly digestible to those who have no intellectual or political use for actual women. It's like some dystopian future ... feminism without any feminists.

Palin's femininity is one that is recognizable to most women: She's the kind of broad who speaks on behalf of other broads but appears not to like them very much. The kind of woman who, as Jessica Grose at Jezebel has eloquently noted, achieves her power by doing everything modern women believed they did not have to do: presenting herself as maternal and sexual, sucking up to men, evincing an absolute lack of native ambition, instead emphasizing her luck as the recipient of strong male support and approval. It works because these stances do not upset antiquated gender norms. So when the moment comes, when tolerance for and interest in female power have been forcibly expanded by Clinton, a woman more willing to throw elbows and defy gender expectations but who falls short of the goal, Palin is there, tapped as a supposedly perfect substitute by powerful men who appreciate her charms.

But while the Republicans would have us believe that Palin can simply stand in for Hillary Clinton, there is nothing interchangeable about these politicians. We began this history-making election with one kind of woman and have ended up being asked to accept her polar opposite. Clinton's brand of femininity is the kind that remains slightly unpalatable in America. It is based on competence, political confidence and an assumption of authority that upends comfortable roles for men and women. It's a kind of power that has nothing to do with the flirtatious or the girly, nothing to do with the traditionally feminine. It is authority that is threatening because it so closely and calmly resembles the kind of power that the rest of the guys on a presidential stage never question their right to wield.

The pro-woman rhetoric surrounding Sarah Palin's nomination is a grotesque bastardization of everything feminism has stood for, and in my mind, more than any of the intergenerational pro- or anti-Hillary crap that people wrung their hands over during the primaries, Palin's candidacy and the faux-feminism in which it has been wrapped are the first development that I fear will actually imperil feminism. Because if adopted as a narrative by this nation and its women, it could not only subvert but erase the meaning of what real progress for women means, what real gender bias consists of, what real discrimination looks like.

Wow, Palin doesn't have much a record of accomplishment... but what record she does have, is pretty scary.  Now comes this tidbit from the Anchorage Daily News which tells of Ms Palin's police department charging rape victims for the "rape kit" used by the police to collect evidence.  The paper looked into the matter and, as it turns out, the policy really was as bad as it sounds.

[Former Gov. Tony Knowles (D)] broke new ground while answering a reporter's question on whether Wasilla forced rape victims to pay for their own forensic tests when Palin was mayor. True, Knowles said.

Eight years ago, complaints about charging rape victims for medical exams in Wasilla prompted the Alaska Legislature to pass a bill -- signed into law by Knowles -- that banned the practice statewide.

"There was one town in Alaska that was charging victims for this, and that was Wasilla," Knowles said

A May 23, 2000, article in Wasilla's newspaper, The Frontiersman, noted that Alaska State Troopers and most municipal police agencies regularly pay for such exams, which cost between $300 and $1,200 apiece.

"(But) the Wasilla police department does charge the victims of sexual assault for the tests," the newspaper reported.

What's more, USA Today reported that the state sponsor of the legislation on rape kits wrote the bill with Wasilla in mind. It was that one small town, in other words, that necessitated statewide legislation to protect rape victims from this absurd fee.

A Palin spokesperson, contacted by USA Today, said the governor "does not believe, nor has she ever believed, that rape victims should have to pay for an evidence-gathering test."

That's good, but there's still the record to deal with. The town of Wasilla had rape victims to pay for their own medical exams during Palin's mayoral tenure, and Palin's hand-picked police chief publicly opposed the state law when it was passed in 2000.

Asked when Palin learned of the policy, and what Palin did to try to change the policy, her spokesperson chose not to respond.

So here we have the facts, on the record of the town charging for these kits.  We have the former governor describing when and why he signed a law banning this practice.  And then we have Ms Palin, saying that she didn't have her police force charge for the kits.  Hmmmm, you gonna believe your lyin' eyes, or Ms Palin?

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Later update:  I just read that there is even more to this story.  Not only did Palin's town charge for those rape kits, but now it has come out that McCain voted against a bill sponsored by Joe Biden to ban any police force in the country for charging for them.  Oh mama, this story just gets crazier!

In 1994, John McCain voted against legislation -- pushed through Congress by Joe Biden -- that helped put an end to the practice of charging rape victims for sexual assault exams.

Twisted as it may sound, charging victims for a forensic exam was a real problem. For example, as AMERICAblog has documented (and the media is now reporting), when Sarah Palin was mayor of Wasilla, the town charged rape victims for the exams.

Biden's legislation required that state, local, and Indian governments provide the rape exams to victims free of charge as a condition of receiving federal funds under the Violence Against Women Act. In 2000, Alaska finally passed state legislation in order to qualify for federal funding.

McCain not only opposed Biden's legislation, but also has voted against funding it as recently as October 2007.